From the President
The Buffalo State College Academic Year Obligation, as defined by the Policies of the Board of Trustees, Article XI, Title H, will commence on Monday, August 24, 2009, and end on Monday, May 31, 2010.

Article XI, Title H states that the academic year obligation should not exceed 10 months, and that an academic-year employee may be required to commence his or her professional obligation at a date reasonably prior to September 1 as may be necessitated by a college’s operating requirements.

The following grant was awarded through the Research Foundation at Buffalo State College in March. For more information, contact the principal investigator or theResearch Foundation at Buffalo State College.

March 2009

John Siskar, Associate Professor, Art Education
$19,000
Buffalo Board of Education
“Summer Arts Enrichment Program 2009”

By Tony Astran

Breaks from the daily routine to focus on something that brings joy to life are essential. Katherine Hartman, associate professor of art education and coordinator of student teaching, understands this well. And she recently had the opportunity to practice what she teaches in theart therapy minor program while on sabbatical.

Hartman initially said she wanted to accomplish a number of different tasks during early proposals for her sabbatical. But what she really wanted, she discovered, was to create her own artwork.

Her colleagues also recognized that a sabbatical would allow her time to refresh her own talents as well as to grieve the loss of her mother and a few close friends, all of whom have died recently. Hartman said she was grateful “beyond words” to have the college’s support for a sabbatical to focus on creating works of art.

“Art moves me through conflict and grief; it keeps me moving forward,” Hartman said. “Through my works, I came to realize that life is dark and light—but at the center, there is hope.”

Raised in Utah, Hartman met her husband at the University of San Francisco, moved with him to Buffalo, and has since taught at Buffalo State College for nearly 30 years. And right before the start of her fall 2007 sabbatical, Hartman’s youngest child moved from home to attend college. So she took the opportunity to travel westward and rekindle the passion from her early years of professional training.

Hartman rented an apartment for a month in the heart of San Francisco and lived on her own for the first time in her life. She gathered a number of mixed media—journal writings, oils, acrylic paints, inks, photos, newspaper clippings, even tree bark—and began pouring her emotions onto canvases. She continued her work in her home studio in Buffalo; by the time her sabbatical ended, she completed more than 10 pieces.

One of Hartman’s pieces is about her mother. “I created it to honor the slow, painful death she experienced and to pray for the peace she so deserves,” she said. Other works include Kindness Saves, Motherhood Totem, and I Believe in Miracles. Hartman is investigating displaying her works publicly.

“The sabbatical gave me a renewed commitment to creative activity and helped me realize what an impact it has on my life,” Hartman said. “In my classes, the work shows students how my style has changed over the years. I hope they can realize that they can find their own style and also learn to explore using different types of art materials.

“I tell my students to honor their pain—it is a commandment of mine,” she said. “Doing so with soulful words you’ve worked so hard to get to, and exploring the words with images and art materials, results in profound outcomes on all levels of being.”

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Read previous Focus on Sabbatical stories:

Felix Armfield
Betty Cappella
Ann Colley
Rob Delprino
Musa Abdul Hakim
David Henry
Wendy Paterson
Stephen Phelps
John Song
Carol Townsend
Jonathan Thornton

By Tony Astran

The Center for Development of Human Services, one of the largest human services training organizations in the country, will honor eight individuals at its annual Faculty and Professional Staff Recognition on Tuesday, April 14, in the Campbell Student Union Social Hall during Bengal Pause (12:15–1:30 p.m.). Refreshments will be served.

Honorees for 2009

• Charles Bachman, professor, English Department (Buffalo State)
• Bruce Bryski, associate professor, Communication Department (Buffalo State)
• Sharon Calabrese, project administration officer, Management Leadership Institute (CDHS)
• Susan Green, clinical assistant professor, School of Social Work (University at Buffalo)
• Dennis Mike, associate professor, Elementary Education and Reading Department (Buffalo State)
• Lori Miller, lecturer, Communication Department (Buffalo State)
• Hermann Pohl, programmer and analyst, Management Information Systems (CDHS)
• Elizabeth LaRocca, student (Buffalo State)

Each fall, the CDHS College Relations Group issues arequest for proposals for partnership projects, listing opportunities for Buffalo State faculty, staff, and students to partner with CDHS for research opportunities on behalf of state-sponsored programs. The opportunities provide research experience for participants, offer stipends, and generate valuable findings that aid in the training of human services workers throughout the state. The CDHS College Relations Group provides year-round guidance to partners. Contact Gail Daniels at 885-4309 for more information.

To R.S.V.P. for the CDHS Faculty and Professional Staff Recognition, contact Ladonna Huff, 885-4309.

By Tony Astran

The Buffalo State community is invited to attend “Book on It,” a panel discussion and book fair featuring campus authors, on Wednesday, April 15, from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. in Butler Library 210.

Bert Gambini, executive producer of the “Meet the Author” series on WBFO-FM 88.7, will moderate the panel from 9:15 to 10:00 a.m. The panel will comprise the following campus authors:

• Ann Colley, professor, English Department
• Sharon Cramer, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor, Exceptional Education Department
• Susan Leist, professor, English Department
• Wendy Paterson, professor and chair, Elementary Education and Reading Department
• Kevin Railey, associate provost and dean, Graduate School
• Paul Theobald, Woods-Beals Endowed Chair and professor, Center for Excellence in Urban and Rural Education

Panelists will discuss how they began writing books and share advice for beginning authors.

The Barnes & Noble at Buffalo State Bookstore will sponsor a book fair featuring works by campus authors before and after the panel discussion. Coffee, juice, bagels, and doughnuts will be served.

“Book on It” is the third event this semester in a series Cramer created called “The Donut Shop of the Mind.”

“The name was intended to convey something that would be enticing and would grab people’s attention,” she said. “The events all relate to scholarship and are especially aimed at campus scholars.”

Past “Donut Shop” events include “Matchmaking 4 Scholarship” and “Getting Started with a Research Initiative.” A fourth event is slated for June.

“Book on It” is co-sponsored by the Academic and Student Affairs Office, Barnes & Noble at Buffalo State Bookstore, the Faculty Development Program, the Information Commons in E. H. Butler Library, the Research Foundation at Buffalo State College, and the Scholarship Support Program.

Buffalo State College is pleased to welcome writer and poet Tisa Bryant for a reading of her work on Thursday, April 16, at 4:30 p.m. in Bulger Communication Center East. The event is free and open to the public.

Bryant’s work traverses the boundaries of genre, culture, and memory within the continuum of history. Her first book, Unexplained Presence (2007), is a collection of original, hybrid essays that remix narratives from Eurocentric film, literature, and visual arts and zoom in on the black presences operating within them.

Born in Tucson, Arizona, and raised in Massachusetts, Bryant earned her M.F.A. in literary arts from Brown University in 2004, and was named a Zora Neale Hurston Scholar to Naropa University that same year. Now an assist professor with the Institute for Writing Studies at St. John’s University, she has taught poetry, fiction, creative writing, literature, and composition at Brown, Naropa, Rhode Island College, the Rhode Island School of Design, and Lesley University. Her writing has appeared in The Believer, Bombay Gin, Chain, Curve, Hatred of Capitalism, Girlfriends, Long Journey Home,Mosaic, Short Fuse, and XCP, and in gallery exhibits for Buffalo-born visual artist Laylah Ali.

Bryant has served as a juror for the San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian and Independent film festivals, and is a founding editor and publisher of the hardcover annual The Encyclopedia Project.

Her visit is sponsored by the Buffalo State College English Department and Just Buffalo Literary Center, and is supported by a Buffalo State Auxiliary Services Grant.

By Melissa Meehan

The “Ethnographic Dreamworlds” lecture series concludes with two seminars on Friday, April 17, and Saturday, April 18, at 4:00 p.m. in the Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College. Six presenters will convene across two sessions to cover topics related to feminist cultural theory, contemporary discourse of American citizenship, science and technology, ordinary life, and public culture. The events are free and open to the public. Contact Allen Shelton, associate professor of sociology, for more information.

April 17, 4:00 p.m., Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College

Lauren Berlant, “On the Desire for the Political”
Lauren Berlant is the George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, and the founder and chair of the University of Chicago’s Center for Gender Studies. Her work considers collective attachments and affects and pedagogies of normativity. Berlant has published The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture (2008);The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship (1997); and The Anatomy of National Fantasy (1991).

Susan Friend Harding, “Provincializing Secularity”
Susan Friend Harding, professor of anthropology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has published widely on fundamentalist Christianity, social movements, and cultural reform. She served as an adviser on the landmark PBS documentary With God on Our Side(1996).

Lesley Stern, “Green Fountains”
Lesley Stern, professor of visual arts at University of California, San Diego, writes about film, culture, and art. Stern is the author of The Smoking Book (1999) and The Scorsese Connection (1995) and coeditor of Falling for You: Essays on Cinema and Performance (1999). She is currently completing the book Gardening in a Strange Land.

April 18, 4:00 p.m., Burchfield Penney Art Center at Buffalo State College

Donna Haraway, “Speculative Fabulations and Ethical Attachment Sites for Out-of-Place Companions”
Donna Haraway is a professor of feminist studies and chair of the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her academic interests include feminist theory, historical and cultural studies of modern science and technology, the relation of life and human sciences, and animal studies. She is the author of When Species Meet (2008); The Haraway Reader (2004); The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (2003); Modest Witness@Second Millennium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience (1997);Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (1991); Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (1989); Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors that Shape Embryos(1976, 2004).

Allen Shelton, “Where the North See Touches Alabama”
Allen Shelton, associate professor of sociology at Buffalo State, is author of Dreamworlds of Alabama (2007). Shelton’s interests are social theory, culture, the body/commodity nexus, and ethnographic reportage. He is currently working on projects involving Proust and Marx on the life of the commodity, Kafka and Weber on “steel casings” and “iron men,” and translating methodologies based on Walter Benjamin’s mapping of urban life to rural Alabama.

Kathleen Stewart, “Atmospheric Attunements”
Kathleen Stewart is director of the Americo Paredes Center for Cultural Studies and associate professor in anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. Stewart’s interests include cultural generativity, affect, ordinary life, public culture, political imaginaries, narrative, and ethnopoetics. Her most recent book is Ordinary Affects(2008).

These events are sponsored by the Residence Life Office, the Dean of Natural and Social and Sciences Office, the Dean of University College, and Intellectual Foundations and funded in part by an Auxiliary Services Grant.

From the Chair of the College Senate
The election for three at-large senators is under way and concludes at 11:59 p.m. Thursday, April 23. Biographies of candidates are posted on the College Senate Web, along with the link for electronic voting. All full-time faculty and professional staff identified by their respective schools and Professional Staff Caucus are eligible to vote. If you encounter any technical difficulties or would prefer a paper ballot, please contact Vince Masci, secretary to the College Senate Chair, 878-5139.

From the Chair of the College Senate
As a reminder to all senators, the next meeting of the College Senate will be held at 3:00 p.m. tomorrow, April 17, in Classroom Building C122. The meeting was moved to the third Friday this month because April 10 was Good Friday. The agenda can be found on the College SenateWeb site.

Howard Zemsky, chair of the Presidential Search Committee, will speak to the Senate and address the procedural expectations as the search for President Howard’s replacement commences. We will miss President Howard immensely but wish her the very best in her new role in Washington D.C.

From the Vice President for Finance and Management
The Internal Control Act of the State of New York establishes certain standards that define a minimum level of quality acceptable for internal control systems. These internal control standards apply to all operations and administrative functions.

Among these standards is one for execution of transactions and events. Specifically, transactions and other events are to be authorized and executed only by persons acting within the scope of their authority. Another standard provides that all transactions and other significant events must be clearly documented and that the documentation be readily available for examination.

Grading and grades constitute administrative functions that are subject to the internal control standards. The advent of online grading makes it all the more important that these standards be explicated and followed.

Therefore:

• The entry of grades for students taking any coursework at Buffalo State College or any subsidiary thereof must be carried out by the faculty member in whose course the student is registered.
• In the event the faculty member is for any reason unable to personally enter these grades, a delegate must be named. This delegation must be approved in advance by the faculty member’s department chair and dean. The process for this approval will be as follows:

The faculty member shall, no later than two weeks prior to CEP, petition in writing to the dean via the department chair for permission to delegate to a specific individual. If approved, the faculty member and the delegate shall be advised in writing. The original request to delegate grading and a proven copy of the approval shall be retained in the dean’s office for inspection as needed. The two-week deadline may be waived by the dean in emergency situations.

• Under no circumstances may a faculty member delegate grading entry responsibility to an employee who is a student at the college.
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